- From Alabama to Georgia to Notre Dame to defending champion Ohio State, some top teams have unnamed starting quarterbacks. Don’t expect any naming to happen anytime soon.
- Spring transfer portal opens later this month. That free agency period encourages coaches to keep mum as the word on quarterback competitions.
- Kirby Smart’s track record offers insight to Georgia’s quarterback situation.
‘Tis the season for “open competition.”
Those two words are on the tip of every college football coach’s tongue, while they scramble for new ways to make it sound as if the backup quarterback nips at the heels of the heir apparent.
From Alabama to Georgia to Notre Dame to defending champion Ohio State, top programs have unnamed starting quarterbacks. Don’t expect any naming to occur anytime soon. Never mind that each of those teams will play a spring game Saturday. That date matters less than what happens four days later: The transfer portal opens for the 10-day spring sweepstakes.
Transfer portal guides rhetoric on quarterback competitions
Roster management tops a coach’s checklist this time of year. Nobody wants his backup quarterback getting sucked into portal’s vacuum, four months before the season kicks off. So, coaches draw out competitions as long as possible – if not on the practice field, than at least with their rhetoric.
At some schools, there’s no hiding reality. You’d be laughed off for trying. So, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian formalized the anointing of Arch Manning as the team’s starter in February. In other breaking news, rainfall made the ground wet.
At Alabama, though, where the Crimson Tide must replace NFL-bound Jalen Milroe? It’s a three-deep competition!
So indicates Kalen DeBoer’s rhetoric, anyway, about veteran Ty Simpson, freshman Keelon Russell and transfer Austin Mack, a former Washington backup who followed DeBoer to Tuscaloosa last year.
“They are all three making some throws, making some big-time throws,” DeBoer said last week.
Sounds just like Notre Dame, where coach Marcus Freeman said each quarterback in his three-headed competition between Steve Angeli, CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey is ‘amazing’ and ‘great.’ Freeman didn’t bother pretending he’d announce a decision soon.
‘I don’t know when it’s going to be (decided),’ Freeman said.
I don’t either, but I know it will be after the portal closes.
How’s the poker face going for Kirby Smart? Well, he described Georgia’s quarterback competition between Gunner Stockton and Ryan Puglisi thusly:
“I think both those guys are doing a great job,” Smart said.
Illuminating.
Now, remember that when Georgia needed a fresh starter in the College Football Playoff after Carson Beck’s injury, Smart elevated Stockton for the job. Puglisi’s next collegiate pass will be his first.
Smart tends to favor experience when making quarterback selections. If that history predicts this competition’s outcome, that’s good news for Stockton. Highly tuned ears might have picked up on this comment about Stockton from the Georgia coach.
‘He knows the inside and out,’ Smart said, in praise of Stockton, ‘and then I get frustrated and impatient when other guys don’t know it like him.’ Smart’s quote was not specifically directed at his quarterback competition, but it nonetheless sounded encouraging for Stockton’s prospects.
Regardless, Smart’s mission is to keep Puglisi believing in his chances to be Georgia’s starting quarterback.
By the sound of it, mission accomplished there.
Puglisi recently told reporters he “definitely” thinks he can win the job.
Smart definitely won’t say he can’t. Georgia’s quarterback depth is dangerously thin behind Stockton and Puglisi, following the transfers of Carson Beck (Miami) and Jaden Rashada after the season.
‘Neck and neck’ quarterback battle at Ohio State. Shocking!
Competition is the word at Ohio State, too, where Ryan Day must replace Will Howard.
Julian Sayin, Lincoln Kienholz and Tavien St. Clair have 14 recruiting stars between them, but no career starts. St. Clair, a freshman who enrolled in January, is no threat to transfer, at least, and Day admitted he’s the longshot in the competition.
But, wouldn’t you know it, Sayin and Kienholz are “neck and neck” by Day’s telling. Simply amazing. Who could have predicted that?
For more insight on Ohio State’s competition, consider that Sayin probably would be headlining Alabama’s quarterback battle, if not for Nick Saban’s retirement spurring Sayin to reconsider his college choice.
Next, peek at the quarterback competition at Missouri, where career backup Sam Horn tossed eight passes in the past three seasons. Five of those passes hit the turf.
Missouri dipped into the transfer portal in the winter and secured Beau Pribula. He gained meaningful playing time last season as Penn State’s backup. Pribula’s arrival spurred Missouri’s former backup, Drew Pyne, to set sail for Bowling Green.
Sounds like an open and shut case that Tigers coach Eliah Drinkwitz nabbed Pribula to be his starting quarterback, but … wait just a second! There’s a Horn o’plenty.
“Those two guys have had a really good competition,” Drinkwitz said recently of Pribula and Horn.
I’m sure that “really good competition” has nothing to with Missouri possessing no quarterback who has ever played, other than Pribula and Horn. I’m also sure Bigfoot exists.
Of course, some quarterbacks can add two plus two and see it equals four and properly assess where they stand on the depth chart, based on whether they practice more with the first string or the backups.
When the portal opens Wednesday, we’ll learn just how well some coaches convinced their quarterbacks that an “open competition” exists.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.
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